Blueprints have long been used to provide information for use at a construction site. Prior to the advent of portable electronic calculators and instruments, the use of the blueprint information in the field typically involved hand calculations and reference tables, and the information was only available as hard copy on a job site.
The adoption of handheld calculators and electronic surveying instruments has provided an electronic storage medium for information that has augmented the traditional blueprint. In using a combination of electronic and hard copy information sources, there is frequently a requirement for transferring information from one medium to the other.
The transfer of electronic information to hard copy can be achieved by simply formatting and printing out the information stored in the electronic medium. This process requires minimal effort on the part of a human user. However, the transfer of information in blueprint to an electronic instrument requires more effort, particularly if the electronic instrument is a handheld device. The size of a handheld device generally limits the input/output (I/O) capability of the device.
The overhead involved in data entry for a handheld device may be increased significantly when corrections or edits must be made. For example, a blueprint entered as a series of line segments may require many line segments in the series to be re-entered or corrected if an early line segment in the series was incorrect and subsequent entries were made relative to the incorrect entry.
Thus a need exists for a system and method that provides efficient transfer of blueprint information to a device having a limited I/O capability, such as a handheld device. There is also a need for a device that provides for efficient editing and correction of data entry.